When she was five, Corrin proudly announced that she would 'never ever ever kiss a boy never ever,' a statement with great gravity and a solemn air. And Ryoma said he would hold her to that statement, because a proud princess and samurai of Hoshido never betrayed her word. Corrin can remember that, too. The affectionate grin on his childish face, the warm weight of his hand resting on her head. Throat sealing up so tightly it almost hurts to breathe, Corrin slouches a little lower in the carriage. The rich purple cushions padding the seats are a lie, hard and unyielding as stone, but then, the Nohrians are a bunch of slimy liars, too. Of course their carriages would be horrid. With a tired sigh, her mother clicks her tongue and motions for Corrin to right herself. "Sit properly, darling, or you'll rumple your dress. His majesty King Garon was generous enough to bestow it upon you, and you wouldn't wish to appear ungrateful," Mikoto murmurs.
Rolling her eyes, Corrin slumps lower down her seat, til her feet flatten against the wooden boards at the bottom of the opposite side of the carriage. Trapped between her legs, Sakura tucks herself into an even smaller space. Beside her, Hinoka looks tempted to slouch as well, but Hinoka's well-behaved. They both look miserable and stiff in their colorful Nohrian silks, like poorly painted dolls. "I would rather like to appear ungrateful, actually," Corrin says. "It's insulting that he treats us like this and blatant disrespect. Forcing daughters to change from their mourning clothes to these garish things. King Garon knows our father hasn't been buried even a month. He knows we should still be wearing traditional garb. To send us this to wear instead is cruel to Father's memory."
Her mother still smiles somehow. It's as stiff and false as a wooden leg, but still there. More annoying than the unchanging, blur of brown scenery visible from the carriage window, Corrin thinks. "Nohrians," Hinoka growls, disgust roughening her voice. "The dresses aren't even for us. They're for his son to look at us in. As we parade around in these clingy things, it'll be easier for the crown prince to decide who has the best birthing hips and—"
"Hinoka. Corrin." The gentle admonition is the harshest word Corrin's ever heard from her mother. Slightly guilty, but still too proud to face her directly, Corrin casts Mikoto a side-long glance. Her frown is fixed on Sakura. The poor child's chin is wobbling in a desperate attempt to hold back hot tears, even as her eyes stare pointedly out the window. With her arms folded around her chest and her legs crossed, Sakura looks even smaller than usual.
"It won't be you," Corrin says, nudging Sakura's knee with her foot. Her youngest sister was fourteen and three months and a slip of a girl besides. No matter how terrible the Nohrians and their country, surely they wouldn't marry her sister off to a man twice her age. When the girl starts to sniffle, Hinoka smooths a hand over Sakura's hair. "Hinoka and I won't let it be you, so no crying. Okay?"
"B-but it'll have to be s-someone. Won't it?" Sakura's teary question sits in the carriage like ten ton of lead. Scrubbing at her reddening eyes, Sakura almost seems to wilt, a flower deprived of proper sun. Corrin's not sure how long any of them could last in Nohr, without the light and warmth of the sun, but Sakura would certainly last the least. The thought of her sister rotting away on some terrible man's arm makes her sick. "A-and I sh-sh-shan't see them a-again… E-ever…"
"Maybe it won't be anyone. Maybe after our thirty days of courtship the crown prince will look at us all and decide none of us are very pretty. Then we can all go home together." Even as she says the words, Corrin knows no one believes it, and no one feels better for it. If Prince Xander doesn't choose anyone, it will mean an ill future for all of Hoshido. Whatever shaky alliance they had will be gone, and then King Garon would storm in and conquer them all, while they were still weak after King Sumeragi's death. A man—no, monster who only ever thinks of war. Garon's knights sit on the Nohr-Hoshido border right next to theirs already, and that army only grows by the day. The slightest excuse for an invasion and… Even an arranged marriage would be preferable to war. If only by the slimmest strand of pegasus hair.
"Be it you, me, or Corrin, I'll fight tooth and nail to see us all a happy family together in Hoshido again. Even if someone has to visit on a Nohrian arm," Hinoka says. "Don't think I couldn't bloody that pompous Prince Marx's grumpy face if I needed to."
Mikoto straightens in her seat. "The prince is a… nice man." Corrin tilts her head as her mother's voice lilts over the description. It's an odd emphasis. Neither good, nor bad. Simply trying to imply something Kamui doesn't understand. She does have a hazy memory of Xander as a boy, a sniffling, shy lump she found in their garden at the summer palace. The Nohrian Royal family did visit once, back in sweeter times, according to Ryoma, before Garon wanted their lands. Of course, now Xander is a grown man, one who supposedly grew up quite well, if the Nohrian travelers through their lands were to be believed. But then Nohrians are all liars, villains, and philanders, so if the prince is a paragon of Nohrian values, perhaps that simply makes him the most untruthful, flirtatious trash pile in the land instead of anything remotely 'well.' "His father is the true…"
"Demon?" Hinoka finishes with a growl. "The man who can't wait until your husband—our father—has rested in the ground even a month before trying to worm his way into our kingdom? The man who's going to make you watch as he hands off one of your daughters to his son like she's some common whore?"
Sakura buries her face in her hands with a wet hiccup. "Hinoka, don't…" At Corrin's gentle mumble, the eldest princess flops back against the carriage cushions.
"I'm not the one who…" Hinoka sighs and rubs comforting circles into Sakura's back. Watching Sakura cry and Hinoka fume is too painful to stomach, and Corrin tilts her head to stare blankly out the carriage window instead. Everywhere in Nohr is the same. Bleak and dank and completely devoid of liveliness. Their capitol is more depressing and worse lit than a Hoshidan funeral. Not even the people are warm. Men and women avert their eyes as the carriage rolls by, the Nohrian royal family crest plain on the doors. Everyone says that Nohrians are dirty cheats, even Setsuna, who barely emoted at all. The grimy people who scuttle from the carriage make her nervous, even though Corrin doesn't have anything of value on her. If someone were to attempt to rob her, Corrin's got her dragonstone in the pouch buried under the front of her dress anyways. She misses Hoshido, where everyone is clean, bright-eyed, and trustworthy.
Their ride grinds to a halt, much like Corrin's heart, as they reach the palace gates. The carriage is so heavy with anticipation Corrin almost expects the wheels to sink into the ground under the weight. She, Sakura, and Hinoka share a look, a terrified, disgusted look.
"Girls, sit up," Mikoto says. The carriage inches into the palace, just as dreary as the rest of the kingdom. Sakura dries her eyes with a sodden handkerchief. She'll fight the men who try to pry her sweet little sister from her grasp. If nothing else, Corrin knows that with the deepest conviction. As the carriage grinds to a halt once more, she leans over and squeezes Sakura's knee. Hinoka wraps a hand around Sakura's shoulder and nods at Corrin. At least she won't be alone in this.
The door swings open to reveal a serving man at the foot of the carriage, trussed up in a tight pants-and-tunic combo Corrin's never seen before. Must be Nohrian. Any rate, she's read about this. He'll take her hand as she exits, to help her out of the door. Snorting, Hinoka rises to her feet best she can under the low ceiling of the carriage. "Must they insist on treating their women like china here?" Hinoka hisses. Corrin stifles a giggle as Hinoka heaves up her kimono and ignores him, hopping out with a distinctly disdainful sniff.
The carriage feels emptier after Hinoka leaves. Rising to her feet, Corrin hovers in the doorway and peeps out into the palace grounds as best she can. All she can see are the Nohrian family's legs, but it feels like they're measuring her already. Perhaps the cattle comparison wasn't too far off. "Go on, sweetheart." With her mother's touch light on the small of her back, Corrin glances at the footman. His gaze darts to the ground as she looks to him. Oboro said that she shouldn't turn her back on a Nohrian, else he'd rob her, but Corrin's not sure how she's supposed to walk through Nohr without exposing her back to someone. Fumbling for her dragonstone over her dress, she hops out of the carriage without his help. The small rebellion is oddly satisfying.
Nohr is hard. There will be no barefoot running on this ground, more rock than soil. Corrin wiggles her toes—shoes accidentally left in the carriage—in the hard earth with a sad sigh. Sakura's polite cough jerks her back into motion. As Corrin lines beside her, Hinoka gives her the smallest comforting smile. The Nohrian family has all come out to meet them, and they all look just as stiff and sour as Ryouma warned her they would be. Except for the youngest. The little blonde with the bouncy twintails—Elise?—smiles at Sakura as she eases her way off the carriage, the only of the Hoshidan princesses to take the footman's hand. Corrin chews on her lip, praying to the Divine Dragon that it won't reflect overly well on her.
With all the grace of a Hoshidan queen, Mikoto exits the carriage last, landing making a sound only Corrin's heightened dragon hearing catches. And then the carriage rolls away, trapping them in this depressing castle surrounded by its depressing city. Sakura begins to sniffle again by her side, and etiquette be damned, Corrin takes one of her tiny hands in her own. The Nohrian royals don't even react. Heartless.
The king comes forward first, an ancient, graying man. His face must be stuck in that sneer Corrin decides, because despite his best attempts to smile, he only looks more frightening than before. In his heavy fur robe, Garon almost towers over them, taller and wider than any man she's ever seen in Hoshido. As Sakura shrinks into her side, Corrin tightens her grasp around the girl's hand. "A pleasure to see you again, Lady Mikoto," Garon says. It should be Queen Mikoto, Corrin wants to say. But Mikoto doesn't correct him. Instead she just lets the man degrade her in his deep, graveling tone. With a smile that Corrin wants to slap off her mother's face. "You look in fine health for a woman of your age."
"And a pleasure to see you as well, your majesty." Mikoto raises up a limp hand, and Garon takes it in his own shriveled fingers. Corrin can't stop the grimace as he brushes it against his lips. Gods, that's going to be her in a moment, groveling before this… political ally with a stiff, simpering smile that will pinch her face is the most unpleasant ways.
"Lady Sakura." If this were Hoshido, with their brothers and their men at their side, Garon would never presume to leer at her sister as he did now. Like she was little more than the piece of meat that might carry on his lineage. "You've flowered into a lovely young blossom," Garon says. Sakura only manages a squeak as he presses a kiss against her knuckles.
Corrin holds her head high as Garon shuffles to face her next. He doesn't even hide his gaze as it pools over her chest and hips. At least Oboro did a marvelous job tailoring their outfits to be as concealing as possible. That ingenuity is some small comfort amongst all the shame of having one's sexual promise measured. Corrin detangles her hand from Sakura's and presents it to the king.
"Lady Corrin." Garon's fingers are warm, and Corrin struggles not to pull her hand out of his grasp. He looks like a dead man, someone who should be cold as ice. Not… warm and alive and eying the pointed tips of her ears with a sinister smirk. "We've heard many rumors of your majesty, dragon child."
She can't do it. She can't bow to this man when he insults her family, plain in his expectation not to be reprimanded. A Hoshidan did not excuse injustice or disrespect. "Princess," Corrin says. "I am a dragon princess. And my mother is—"
But Garon has already moved to Hinoka. Corrin stands there, gaping at the blatant dishonor and both families' smooth refusal to acknowledge it. On her right, Xander places a kiss on Sakura's hand, and she wants to slap that away, too. Just separate everything and go back to Hoshido. And while she's at it just… put everything back to the way it was. Two equal powers with two living kings and—Xander clears his throat, and Corrin snaps her attention up to him.
Xander is a sad prince. Blonde flyaway curls tickle his jawline, but the rest of his face, from the worry lines round his eyes to the hard set of his mouth, is kept under cold, hard control. It would suffocate her to live with him. At least he would be pretty to look at, even if he kept her locked up in some far off tower as he consorted with all manner of concubines and stole her country's wealth. "You're the dragon… princess," Xander murmurs. Any hint of the blubbering blob she remembers is gone. Does he remember her, she wonders. "Princess Corrin."
Oh gods, she might have to marry this virtual stranger. Throat tight, Kamui nods. He takes the tip of her fingers in his gloved hand with just the flicker of curiosity in his gaze. This silence isn't good. Though she doesn't want him to prefer her either, she still needs to talk lest they pick Sakura instead. "A-and you're the crown prince of Nohr," Corrin replies. He brushes his mouth against hers, a warm, butterfly touch. "Prince Xander."
Xander grants her a hint of a tight-lipped smile. If that's how the man emotes, Corrin knows she'll go mad as his wife. The rest of his siblings, Camilla, Azura, Leo, Elise, file by her, but they all know they're not here to see each other. Not unless she stays. Leo is a little easier on the eyes than his brother, if just as stiff, which Kamui supposes is some comfort if someone else needs to be… bargained. Bargained. Traded off like cattle to this dark country in exchange for continued peace between their nations. She can't do this. She can't can't can't—Kamui flinches as Sakura laces their fingers together. Sakura's darling smile is somehow undiminished by the gloomy Nohr air. For however long that can last.
"Come. I'm sure your ride was exhausting. Our servants shall take your bags, lead you to your rooms, and prepare you for dinner tonight," Garon says. He commands them like they're his subjects. And everyone accepts it. Even Hinoka, though it's accompanied by a thinly veiled scowl. Corrin grits her teeth and glares at the sad, rocky ground. "My son will accompany you." And one of those sons came with far less pressure than the other. Leo, Leo, Leo, Le—"Why do you lurk among your siblings, Xander? Come forward."
And let the awful, vomit inducing month of matchmaking begin.
